CAPtions

Sunday, September 10, 2017

We feel fine. Really. We are healthier than we have ever been, deliriously happy and looking forward to much, much more of the same. And no, we aren't feeling particularly apocalyptic. I'm not burdened with any heavy sense that these are "the end times." And it has nothing to do with the fact of my 61st birthday barreling down on me like one of the several hurricanes sweeping its terrible eye into the Gulf. It's just that I am happy that it's done. Finally.

Throughout my ministry I have encouraged people to consider their final arrangements. By that I mean funeral plans. What I have tried to communicate is that any number of people care about you, but no one wants to make your funeral plans.

On a few days notice. In the midst of tears.

"Making your own arrangements, before they are needed, is the caring thing to do..."

...I have said to others -- for years -- but not myself.

Until, that is, a few months ago. As Memorial Day approached, we began to consider our own memorials. We talked about how we wish to end up. We talked about where we wish to end up. We talked about what kind of service in our memory we would prefer, what we would like included -- and excluded. And after making all manner of decisions we sat down with a funeral director and put it all on record. We purchased a cemetery plot (one, since our cremains will be buried together); we picked out a monument and how it should be inscribed. And we wrote numerous checks to underwrite it all. And we wrote drafts of our obituaries. It's amazing how exemplary our lives have been when we get to be the ones describing them. OK, that's a joke. More truthfully, it's amazing how simple, straight-forward and succinct our lives are when we commit the salient details to print -- what we have valued; what in it all we disregard. We could say more, of course; going on and on about this or that. But eventually a kind of silliness ensues in the self-congratulation that we simply wouldn't condone.

And so there it is. All of it finally done. The ideas are formed, the plans are made, the Wills are updated, the necessaries are purchased and the stone is even solidly in place, awaiting the final chronological inscripted details.
I'll acknowledge that these are not comfortable conversations. We haven't particularly enjoyed all this talk about our demise. But we haven't thought of it as morbid. We have thought of it as a gift -- to each other, to my kids, or to whomever else is left to sweep our proverbial floor. Our preferences our clear, with enough leeway built in to overrule them as desired. The tangible choices are made, the financial burdens are lifted. All our surviving loved ones need do is grieve. And that, of course, is up to them.

For our part, with these ending questions answered and their practical implications arranged, we can get on with living.

Fully.

Happily.

And hopefully for a long time to come.

After all, there is hanging fruit to harvest, new seeds to plant, fresh grains to thresh, and more eggs to gather.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

I don’t want to talk about the President.It’s not that I don’t care about the office
or have no opinion of its current occupant.It’s simply that in these ham-handed, binary times during which subtlety
and nuance have become casualties of public discourse where reason and
reasonable objectivity once felt comfortably at home, I’ll express my political
thoughts in the ballot box.Besides, I
try to keep in mind that nausea and diarrhea are not the real problems when I’m
suffering such maladies, but the outward expression of something deeper.

So no, I’m less concerned about the President than I am
about the rest of us.This is surely not
the first time in history that a people have lost their way, but we seem
hell-bent on elevating our particular manifestation of lostness to epic
heights.Or perhaps we should be
speaking, instead, of depths.Wiser
social observers than me will better understand what brought us to this
morass.Stolen opportunity.Economic frustration.An increasingly crowded and diverse public
and philosophical space.Instant and
constant communication of both news and opinion with no rubrics to
differentiate the two.All of the above.And more.But whatever the drivers, they have brought us to a very loud,
aggressive, intolerant and unforgiving place.And it’s frightening.I wish that
the shameful clash of people and ideologies last weekend in Virginia – fueled
by prejudiced hatred – was the exception, but alas it is paradigmatic.

Only two descriptors present themselves in what remains of
the conduct of our public life:“me”,
and everyone else.Every now and then
multiple “me’s” seem able to make common cause, but they are marriages of
convenience rather than sacred vows, as fragile as the egos that beat their
chests behind them.

But of all the battling contestants in this Roman Coliseum
called “America”I am perhaps most
disappointed in my own lifelong community:the church.Our most visible
representatives have become “hater apologists” – or, in the words of our biblical
forebears, “Court Prophets.”And our
congregations, once ideologically royal purple, have segregated into Reds and
Blues.More partisan than confessional,
more defensive than invitational, more condemning than caring, it’s hard to
find much residue in our worship and our “discipleship” of the one we profess
to follow.

As long as we view ourselves as “supreme” – racially,
politically, patriotically, morally -- we are missing the point, and are well
along the way to losing our soul.

The fact is we simply cannot love by hating.We cannot welcome through exclusion.We cannot heal by brutalizing.We cannot grow deeper by becoming more and
more shallow.We have a better story
than that.We have a better message than
that.We have a nobler mission than
that. And we have a more powerful example than that.

Friday, May 19, 2017

At six and a half months of age, Truett is an extraordinarily happy and easy-going baby. He smiles, he laughs, he scrutinizes the various textures with which his fingers come into contact, he studies intently nearby objects and movements with a decided preference for ceiling fans whenever he can catch sight of one. He will concentrate on curiosities for minutes at a time. But make no mistake, he does, indeed, cry. He cries when he is hungry, and he cries when he is overly tired -- this latter, of course, along with an occasional whimper when a diaper change is overdue, is hardly his fault. Credit those tears to his caregivers who have gotten busy with other matters under heaven. So, hunger and fatigue. That's pretty much it, which I find to be an amazingly short list.

When, I've begun to wonder -- and for what reasons -- does that list begin to lengthen? By the time a person reaches my age we are crying about all sorts of things -- skinned knees and hurt feelings, griefs, disappointments regardless of merit, even unspeakable joys. We cry because we don't get our way, we cry because of what was said about us on the playground or by the media. We cry at movies, we cry in church, we cry with relief. But even as I review the list which is intrinsically incomplete, I note that somewhere along the way tears of need -- for food, for rest -- give way to tears of want. I cry because I received what I didn't want -- or conversely, I cry because what I desperately wanted actually came my way?

I don't mean to malign the “wants”. After all, developmental psychologists would dig down into several of them and find them sprouting from core needs like validation and basic security of one form or another. That said, I can't help but wonder if our lists of crying offenses haven't gotten a bit out of control. Could it be that when we call someone a “big baby”, rather than the target of our derision we are slandering instead the babies in our midst who reserve their tears for the core essentials?

Maybe that's what Jesus had in mind when he encouraged us to become like little children, rather than the whining adults we have excessively become.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

A few years ago I had the privilege of assisting a family
making burial arrangements at the Veteran's Cemetery near Des Moines. It is a
beautiful and beautifully maintained memorial site, tightly managed and
efficiently run. The representative helping the family went through the
options, the paperwork, and the benefits -- among them being a certificate
commemorating the deceased and signed by the President. I was saddened -- no, I
was angered -- when the representative paused at this point and with a kind of
pregnant gaze mentioned to the family that the form for this certificate didn't
have to be sent in any time soon. “Some would prefer their certificate to be
signed by a different President, and so delay the submission.”

I've been thinking of that lamentable conversation in recent
days as we collectively start a new chapter as a citizenry. We are of a
decidedly mixed mind as we toe up to this starting line. Some are excited by
the prospects. Others find them appalling. Fair enough. That's the political system.
Always there are defenders and detractors. Always there are political allies as
well as foes both partisan and principled. Some in each category are more
strident than others. At the end of the day, however, we only get one President
at a time. One, who serves us all.

Which is why I'm feeling again the same acute sadness,
weariness and indeed annoyance with the “opt out” reflex so popular among so
many of us as I did that day in the Veteran's Cemetery. “Not my President” is
the mantra I see hashtagged, Facebooked, bumper stickered and crowed. But that
sentiment makes for a better slogan than a democracy. We get one President at a
time, whether it's the one we voted for or not. He or she may not represent our
values, our core principles or our chosen way of being in the world. But make
no mistake: she or he does indeed represent us in consequential ways that bear
our signature, whether we have written it there or not. There are no asterisks,
no “opt out” boxes, no abstentions. Republicans, who constantly chaffed at such
“not my President” dismissals of George W. Bush’s legitimacy, should be just as
vigilant about this as Democrats who wearied at the similarly obstructionist
and repugnant dismissals by Republicans of Barack Obama's leadership.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about where we are and
where the signs suggest we are headed. I didn't vote for this President. Quite
apart from his philosophical principles which I find mercurial at best and
callous if not punitive at worst, for all his financial and professional
advantages I experience him to be an unseemly, boorish, churlish cretin who
offends most of my moral, religious and social sensibilities, most of the time.

But we only get one President at a time, and though the
parties have their own interests to spin, it is in no one's interest for him to
fail. Like it or not, he is OUR President. We had better figure out how to
encourage him, pray for him, indeed nudge him toward our collective success, or
it will be to our collective loss.

Lobby, then, write letters, call your elected
representatives, make your views known, and in a few years vote again, keeping
in mind that ones principles prevail either by outnumbering those who oppose
them, or by persuasion -- and the former is typically accomplished by the
latter.

Those who long for a different course might consider
abandoning the quixotic quest for technicalities to invalidate the recent
election, along with the near drone-like dismissals of everything emanating
from it, and get on with the harder but more critical work of fashioning and
communicating a compellingly winsome case for something better.

Far more than merely casting a vote, that's the real work of
a democracy.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Santa survived another year.I don’t mean “Santa” in the fairy tale sense, or “Santa” in the
metaphorical sense, or “Santa” in the nostalgic sense.I mean the fragile construction paper
ornament that has hung on a Diebel family Christmas tree for each of the past
50 years.More, I hope, since I would
like to believe that the crudely simple little work of childhood fabrication is
the product of a very young Tim Diebel.But give it its due:what it
lacks in fine artistry it more than makes up for in longevity.Every Advent that we have had it since my parents
passed it into our keeping from theirs I have feared for its survival.The paper is increasingly brittle and the
folds frightfully thin.Unwilling to
risk the tugs of a wire ornament hanger I routinely nestle it in amongst the
branches of the tree, crossing my fingers that nothing will dislodge it and
send it to its dismemberment.

But here we were on January 8 stowing the precious
decorations and dismantling the tree – late, I know, for most households but a
precious indulgence in ours – and Paper Santa was the last to be removed.I had worked around it.First came off the glass stars, and then the
miscellaneous treasures from travels and friends and family remembrances.The balls were next and then the topping bow.

Everything, one by one, until nothing remained but Santa.I
haven’t fully found explanation for my reticence.I am a sentimental fool, and that’s almost
certainly part of the reason.Memories
of Christmas trees past and the family times around them are powerful forces,
and I willingly submit to their embrace.So yes, sentimentality is part of it – but only part.

I’m getting older, too – now months into my 61st
year – and touching something of my childhood affords a kind of steadying
existential crutch amidst the dizzying awareness of the passage of time.I still can’t believe I have already attended
my 40th high school reunion since it feels, for all the world, like
that senior year was months rather than decades ago.I rarely see those old classmates and know
practically nothing of their present lives, and yet I still think of them as
close and best friends.Some of them
were around, I suspect, when Paper Santa was getting colored, cut and folded,
and there is something grounding about fingering the cotton puffs and the
crayon lines.

It could likewise be that with the birth of a new grandson I
am anticipating a whole new generation of Paper Santas to come – this ancient
one as something of an anticipatory foretaste of the feast to come.I hope so – and look forward to making room
on future trees.

Future, then, as well as past; an ancient self visiting a
much older one; memory as well as promise; grounding as well as fancy;
childhood naiveté confronting and challenging the cynicism of age.

I don’t know completely.All I know is that it was the last to leave its bristly perch and the
longest to remain in my hands; held, cherished – not so much as a talisman with
magic powers for whatever lies ahead, but more as a touchstone, a blessing of
sorts, from all that lies behind that has prepared this self for whatever might
yet be.

Friday, December 23, 2016

It had been a typical neighborhood Christmas gathering up until then -- convivially assembled around beautiful appetizers and festive libations, in a lovely home warmly decorated, hospitably expansive enough to include young children happily pressed into duty as cookie butlers, adult children in for the holidays, and us, shoehorned into the "neighborhood” despite our remote address. Perched on sofas, clustered in chairs, meandering around the table and dawdling in the kitchen we chatted and laughed, munched, shared holiday plans and reminisced.

I'm not clear about the exact progression, but it started with the shared memory of a particularly sentimental adolescent rendition of “O Holy Night” that had involved one of the guests, and then meandered through the kinds of twists and turns and permutations around the room and other conversational groupings that can only happen at parties. And then the suggestion rather organically found voice that two of the other guests -- both professional musicians connected with the nearby college -- sing it for us on the spot. He, the pianist, hesitated as there was no music at the nearby piano; she, the vocalist, demurred, uncertain of all the words. “Let me think it through,” he finally said as he took his place on the bench and began to move his hands silently above the keys. She stood nearby, gazing into nowhere as her mental fingers gathered up the lyrics.

After several minutes and without fanfare his hands ceased their hovering and music began to flow -- that familiar arpeggio clearing the path for her voice that followed...

...”O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear savior's birth...”

“A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...”

And somehow none of us, who only moments before had been chatting around inanities and occasional profundities in the ordinary home of friends, knew any longer where we were. Or perhaps more accurately each of us knew precisely where we were: there, in that suddenly expansive and achingly awe-filled moment that did, indeed, on this dark winter night in a season troubled and tense, seem somehow like the in-breaking of a hopeful morning. There, held by his gliding fingers and washed by her soaring voice. And there, I know no other way to describe it, we worshipped.

It felt, in a way, like we were falling -- or soaring as soulfully and celestially as her voice. We followers and drifters, disciples and agnostics; we, both faithful and indifferent, transported to the very outskirts of divinity...and for some, beyond.

Eventually, and despite our unuttered prayers that it go on forever, her voice and his fingers reached their final note and the room fell still -- hushed for that moment by the sheer immensity of grandeur.

She apologized for the few words she hadn't got quite right; he for the few discordant notes that hadn't fallen in line. But we weren't listening -- at least to their disclaimers. We were still on our knees, still bound up in this impromptu thread of glory...

...still listening to something larger;

actually experiencing, for one of the precious few times this season...

Monday, June 13, 2016

Could we please just stop talking for minute? Can we declare a moratorium on the use of our brains for a moment -- even a second; a moratorium on arguments about the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, who we are voting for and whether they actually meant what they said? Not forever; just for a time. Could we possibly press “pause” on all the moral posturing, all the righteous indignation, all our Bible thumping, trash-talking, Pontificating, problem solving, philosophizing and fear-mongering long enough to simply...

...cry?

Fifty human beings -- fellow countrymen -- just got slaughtered in a matter of moments, plus a like number injured. People with whom we may have everything in common or nothing save the only two things that matter: the Image of God, and a pulse. Can't we simply grieve the fact that in a horrific act of terror that precious pulse was stilled?

Or have we become so mired in our opinions, our partisanship, our positions, our fears and our machismo that we have completely lost the capacity to feel?

To empathize?

To know ourselves to be part of the human race?

To weep?

Let this be an "issue" some other day. Today, allow it the privilege of simply being a tragedy.

How has it come to be in this country that in response to any word, any act, any idea -- whether hopeful or hurtful -- we are immediately driven to mount our horse, scale the mountain, plant a flag and defend it?

I say let’s agree to disengage our brains for a moment -- quieting all the “head chatter” -- and quietly remember how to feel something again besides anger and fear.

If we can.

If it's not too late.

If we haven't already become so metallic in mind and soul that we no longer have the capacity to be human.

I don't care right now about all the hypothetical solutionceuticals -- those simplistic little pill-like fixes that are suddenly, laughably being proposed that if ”swallowed” would instantly cure such cultural ills. For one thing, I deeply doubt they will work. For another, it's all just making my head hurt. And my heart. Fifty human beings just lost their lives in our back yard, and the hospital wards are full of that many more. It shouldn't matter right now who they were, where they were, if they voted like us or didn't bother to vote at all; if they were Christians, Muslims, atheists or Zoroastrians. It should -- at least for these staggeringly grief-filled moments -- only matter THAT they were, with air filling their lungs one moment and blood pumping through their veins, and all of a sudden, violently, tragically, it wasn't, that blood in an instant loosed everywhere except where it needed to be.

If that kind of sobering tragedy no longer has the capacity to silence us and drive us collectively to our knees in heartbroken solidarity then God help us all. If, that is, God can even any longer recognize us as the humans once created in that Divine Image and therefore worthy of help.

Please, can we just stop yelling at each other for a moment and simply grieve? If for no other reason, we need to remember how.

We can get back to analyzing, cursing, politicking and posturing in a day or two. That, I am sure, we'll never forget how to do.

Happy Flockster

About Me

Born and reared in west Texas; an Iowan since 1993. A parish pastor
for 30 years, now, "gone to ground" in a gardening classroom
established on ten acres in response to a new call to better understand
the gift of food, and to participate in the holy work of delicious
creativity. Learn more at www.taprootgarden.com